Sermon Tone Analysis

5 May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, 6 that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

7 Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

BIG IDEA:

What do we have to know?

Why do we need to know it?

What do we have to do?

Why do we have to do it?

ME

I am weak.

There, I said it.

While most messages shouldn't focus on the pastor, I want to speak to you heart to heart.

You see, I am weak physicially.

During our Iceland trip, I was challenged to hike up to the top of this foss (foss means fall as in waterfall) but I never climbed so steep and so high in my life.

It was thrilling to get up there, to prove that I am not weak, but I was wobbly coming down.

Weak.

Mentally I am weak.

I take 20mg of Paxil every night in order to balance the brain chemicals to prevent me from experiencing a panic attack.

This is why sometimes for those keen enough you will see my hands tremble slightly when I am passionate, occasionally flipped the wrong cover for the communion, or ask the congregation to pray again even after announcement when we should be going into silent reflection.

I have sleep apnea, which means I go to sleep with a Darth Vader mask on or else anyone around me will not be able to sleep because of what one unfortunate counselor once described as a freight train level of snoring, or I will suffocate and wake up and my brain doesn’t get the proper rest to have a good night sleep.

I am a sinner.

I have done or at least thought of everything within the ten commandments where God told us not to do.

This is not to give myself an excuse, only to prove this is where I am.

And I like to believe this is where we are, if we admit it.

Now why did I start off on a low note?

This is not to ask for your pity, but just to demonstrate church is not made up of people who have it altogether.

If you have that expectation coming in, you will be thoroughly disappointed.

WE

You see in the church, just like any part of society or a gathering group of people, there are those who are strong and those who are weak.

And because of perceived strength or weakness, some of us who are strong unintentionally becoming intolerant to those who are weak.

And vice versa, some of those who are weak, whether it is social awkwardness, moral failures, a gossiping tongue, we annoy those who are different.

Couple that with some of us who are here for the first time to this community, just checking things out to see because this church is close to your home, or you want your child to grow up with good morals, or however long you may actually have come to MCBC but are sitting in the balcony and turn left when the message is done, we are all here today because we are church.

And where there are people, there are disagreement.

And when we in the church disagree, we usually starts from something minor or insignificant.

Who has the right to which room?

Why did the youths not clean up the basement again?

Why does the pastor ignore me, when I pass by him after service and said hi?

And the cumulation of these human weakness and frailty, coupled with sin, can create the perfect storm for strife, confusion, or outright conflict.

So what are we to do to maintain the ideal community of love and grace and hospitality, compared to the reality we are here with expectations we want met?

GOD

We’ve been for the past few weeks look into the letter Paul, an apostle, or follower of Jesus, wrote to the church in Ephesus.

We looked at the community which is being formed, elected or chosen to be set apart to show what it would be like if Jesus is our king and we are ruled by him.

How we receive grace, the gift of salvation which cost Jesus to pay for the penalty of our sin and wrongdoing.

And then the gift of God, that everyone of us who accepted this grace is given gifts to serve one another in this community.

And just last week, we looked at our relation to a God who sees us as his sons and daughters and what might that mean.

You can go on the MCBC English website to revisit those messages.

And next week we are going to conclude this series with Mike, our youth pastor intern on Standing your Ground in .

But today, as you see we have an obvious drop in attendance, don’t worry, it’s just about half of us are away for the English retreat, we didn’t want you to be left behind so I’ve been tasked with sharing about the theme of retreat here so you have a taste of it: Life Together.

Besides it being the title of one of the best Christian Literature written by one of my favourite theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died a martyr for the faith for opposing Hitler during WWII, we are going to look at this theme through almost the end of the letter Paul wrote to the Church of Rome.

Here, in chapter 13, he talks about a situation where for the sake of those weak in their morality, having to do with eating food sacrificed to idols, those who are strong limit their freedom to eat before these weak brothers new to the faith by sacrificing and abstaining for their sake.

Sounds simple enough, yet why does Paul need two chapters of ink to resolve this?

Because of a fundamental difference between these two groups of people.

The Jews and the Gentiles.

Which is kind of like the Jews and the Palestinians, or England and the IRA of days past, a tense situation.

When you are called the chosen people, you get just a little bit more morally lifted or sense of superiority (even when in fact they are chosen for other nations to see), and the Gentiles, whom belong some of your oppressors, or people groups you look down on because of their status, reputation, culture, values and practices.

Pride and tradition.

Your Freedom as payment for my Restraint.

This is a time bomb waiting to happen.

Let’s see how Paul diffuses it.

Open up to , it is on page 949 —— of the pew bible.

Jesus demonstrated the way to our life together through weakness.

(ESV): 14 As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions.

2 One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. 3 Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him.

Three times it says do not: do not quarrel, and do not despise, and do not pass judgment.

Instead twice it says, we should welcome them, why?

Because God himself has welcomed them.

Keep this in mind now that we see the context of strong and weak.

(ESV): 15:1 We who are strong have an obligation

to bear with the failings of the weak,

and not to please ourselves.

How?

By using the failings of the weak at our expense, to jeer and sneer and laugh at them.

To create who is with us and who isn’t based on however you defined weakness to be.

As long as there is an us and a them, there can be no unity and no life together.

Weak in context is weakness towards falling back to former ways, particularly pertaining to meat sacrificed to idols, to eat or to abstain.

This may sound trivial for us today, but in Ephesus it was a matter of principle.

It was the law.

The Torah, God’s law, through which the Ten Commandments came from, had a very specific set of dietary restrictions.

Gentiles can eat anything, Jews can’t.

But when Jews take not eating prohibited food from Torah as their badge one honour, those gentiles who eat everything, especially food sacrificed to idols or false gods, wear a badge or shame and should disassociate with connecting with them.

Paul says this is the old way of associating with one another.

Instead,

The strong should identify themselves as one community with the weak so much so the reproach or insult hurled towards the weak the strong also receives willingly.

With gentleness and patience, trying to correct their weak, even if it means entering into it and not seeing immediate success or overcoming such failings.

2 Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.

Why?

3 For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.”

Reproaches = insults; Rude communication that belittles or offends somebody or something unjustly

Who reproached = harshly criticize; to find fault with real or merely perceived faults in a harsh and demeaning manner

It always go back to Jesus doesn’t it?

Not only do we not further criticize or ridicule the weak, we do the exact the opposite, because Jesus would have done to same for us.

In fact, he did do the same for all of us.

During his earthly ministry?

Who defended the weak, the oppressed, the misunderstood, widows and orphans who had no social status in a patriarchal world?

It was Jesus.

Who honoured a prostitute, a tax collector, several of them in fact, with grace, hospitality and service?

It was Jesus.

Who went head to head with the strong, the muscles of the oppressive system of scribes, Pharisees and sadducees?

It was Jesus.

But when it comes to him needing defending, he wasn’t so lucky.

When he was reproached he had no defender for his name.